During the past decade, a great effort has been made by the medical community to decrease concerning and sometimes tragic effects of accidental needle sticks. A revolution in medical needle products and their use has resulted in significant growth of a relatively new safety needle industry. In addition, use of IV catheters has significantly reduced the number of needle sticks required in contemporary medical practice.
However, increased use of catheters (nearly every hospital patient is currently fitted with an IV catheter shortly after admission) has resulted in a generation of problems and procedures related to catheter safety. Recognition of some catheter use problems has resulted in the following principles, considerations and guidelines:                A basic principle taught in IV therapy is that every IV delivered medication should be flushed. This principle is intended to help prevent incompatible drug mixing and assure delivery of a timely, complete dose. Unfortunately, many nurses forget to flush or assume that a running IV will flush a Y-injection site which leaves small amounts of medication in the Y-site where a potentially incompatible drug may cause a problem. Many institutions claim that a high catheter replacement rate in central lines is a direct consequence of a failure to consistently flush lines after each medication injection into the IV line.        
A Jul. 5, 2005, PHC4 Research Brief entitled “Hospital-acquired Infections in Pennsylvania” reported that clinician-caused (nosocomial) bloodstream infection rates in Pennsylvania may be as high as 21,458 per year at a treatment cost of $861 million and mortality rate of 25.6% in 2004 alone. Such treatment costs in hospitals extrapolate to a $20.3 billion cost and over 80,000 deaths per year in the United States. Additional studies that cite similar increases in infection rates led to the “100,000 lives Campaign” instigated by the Institute for Healthcare Improvements, Cambridge, Mass., which is intended to save lives that would otherwise be lost due to nosocomial infection rates. Clinicians who work in IV therapy are well schooled in knowing that “the more line breaks and line manipulations, the greater the chance for line contamination”. Reducing line breaks and line manipulations, in principle, will reduce line contaminations and patient infections.
A chronic nursing shortage, projected to persist beyond 2012, places nursing time at a premium. Short-staffed healthcare facilities result in busier nurses who may be more prone to medical errors, some of which result in serious consequences for patients. A product which would save nursing time by reducing nursing steps would simplify caregiver procedures and reduce nursing steps should also most assuredly reduce clinician errors and overall healthcare costs.                A 2004 NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) Safety Alert: Preventing Occupational Exposure to Antineoplastics and Other Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings warns healthcare institutions about the need to provide products and procedures to protect clinicians from hazardous drug exposure. Attempts to reduce such drug exposure has resulted in use of expensive protective port attachment devices.        
Thus, there exists a severe contemporary need for devices, not currently available commercially, which reduce injection site makes and breaks (see Terms and Definitions Section), reduce nurse and pharmacist time, facilitate ease of flushing and provide a greater degree of safety related to line contamination and subsequent patient infection and care-giver risk to hazardous drug exposure.